It was generally expected that a team from the Midwest was going to blow San Diego State out early in the season. It just wasn't supposed to be Eastern Illinois.

Seriously? An FCS team just beat the reigning Mountain West champs, 40-19? Looks like the season-opener for the Aztecs was an eye-opener for anyone watching.

You have to think that after Saturday's game, Ohio State views SDSU the way a lion views a zebra. In one week, the Aztecs will travel to Columbus to take on the nation's No. 2 ranked team, and if their performance even remotely resembles what took place against EIU, they'll be lucky to end the game within 60 points.

Simply put: Nothing went well for SDSU Saturday night, except maybe the kicking. Conversely, kicking was the only area where the Panthers struggled, unless we're talking about what they did to the Aztecs behinds.

If one were looking at this from a historical perspective, he may have been able to predict this result. SDSU, after all, has a habit of falling a few stories short of its preseason hype.

Since departing from the PCAC in 1978, any time the Aztecs have finished first or second in the conference standings, they have failed to place higher than fourth the following season.

Will 2013 perpetuate that trend? It's too early to say for sure, but anybody trying to make that case has this 21-point clobbering as a star witness.

"That was as bad a performance as I've ever been around," said SDSU coach Rocky Long, who would not let his players talk to the media after the game. "I sure hope that's not our team."

Anticipation swirled about the Mesa when the Aztecs hired Bob Toledo as their offensive coordinator this offseason, with the hope being that the former UCLA head coach's creativity would have a profound impact on SDSU's productivity. And while we caught a glimpse of that potential in the first half when Colin Lockett took the ball from Adam Muema on a reverse and ran it 48 yards to the end zone, the rest of the game was an offensive cacophony.

Quarterback Adam Dingwell struggled for four quarters, completing just 27 of his 63 passes while throwing four interceptions, coughing up three fumbles and enduring four sacks. Were players dropping his passes throughout the game? Yeah. But given how some of those players were EIU linebackers and cornerbacks, things could have been worse.

The running game wasn't much better. In fact, if you remove Locket's 48-yard sprint, SDSU gained a mere 122 yards on 34 carries with no run longer than nine yards.

That big play in the second half never came, and the crowd's near catatonic state served as evidence. When the stadium screen lit up with the words MAKE SOME NOISE! in the third quarter, you half expected them to add the word PLEASE?

The defense, in many ways, was just disastrous, especially when defending the deep ball. The Panthers first scored when quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo connected with receiver Erik Lora on a 37-yard TD pass, added six more points in the second quarter when Garoppolo hit Keiondre Gober with a 62-yard pass, and may have been able to find the end zone once more had Gober not fumbled after reeling in a 54-yard toss. Cornerbacks were the big question for the Aztecs coming in, and if they want to contend in the Mountain West, they better hope that what happened Saturday wasn't the answer.

After the game, Long asserted that one football game does not make a team's season. And if you remember last year, a few weeks before the Aztecs upset Nevada in Reno and later stunned Boise State in Idaho, they suffered a four-point loss to San Jose State.

Can things turn around for this team? After Saturday, that would be a hard thing to expect.

Then again, when expectations disappear, that's usually when the Aztecs show up.